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Focusing too much on one sport could be holding your kids back

When Maura Young’s daughter, Evelyn, started synchronized swimming at the age of 7, it was only supposed to be a recreational activity. After all, her little girl also liked soccer and the creative expression of dance.

“You have no idea when you go along, especially when they’re 7, what you’re getting yourself in for,” says the Toronto mom of two.

Even if parents have Olympic-level aspirations for their athletic kids, a laser focus on one sport from a young age isn’t going to make that podium a reality. (Carlos Osorio / Toronto Star)

It wasn’t long until the head coach asked if Evelyn would be interested in swimming for a provincial-level team, which even at that tender age meant practices two or three times a week.

“She kept doing dance for a few years and then we had to take her out of dance because we couldn’t afford the time or the money to have her in two programs like that. Then eventually soccer dropped off as well.”

That’s a common pattern today. Kids’ competitive sports involve so many practices, games and tournaments that families usually can’t manage more than one per child. But experts say that specializing too early in life can lead to injury, burnout and loss of interest in a once-loved athletic pursuit.

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That’s what happened with Young’s daughter. During the year she turned 16, Evelyn was training 28 to 30 hours per week, and although her team had placed sixth nationally the previous season, she wasn’t happy. With a change of coach and no opportunity to do the solo or duet performances that she found creatively fulfilling, Evelyn “got bored doing the team routine over and over” and, at the end of the year, dropped out after nearly a decade in the pool.

In retrospect, Young says she wishes she hadn’t convinced Evelyn to carry on for that final year, but rather had let her go out on the high note of that good performance on the national stage the season before. “Hindsight is 20-20,” she says. Evelyn is now happily re-enrolled in dance after finding a program with a commitment of about five hours per week.

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Physical health researcher Leigh Vanderloo, who holds a PhD in health promotion and works for ParticipAction in Toronto, says there’s a misguided notion that early specialization helps kids excel at their sport. In fact, it could be the very thing that holds them back.

“Peak participation in sports for children tends to be around 10, 13. Then after that it starts to decrease steadily, and early specialization is one of the main contributions to this early drop out,” Vanderloo says.

Focusing too soon on just one sport can lead to overuse injuries, burn out and loss of interest, she says. Plus, there can be mental health repercussions for kids who worry they’ll disappoint their parents if they don’t perform well or choose to give up the sport their parents have invested in so heavily.

Even if parents have Olympic-level aspirations for their athletic kids, a laser focus on one sport from a young age isn’t going to make that podium a reality. The International Olympic Committee itself released a consensus statement in 2015 that advised waiting until at least puberty before specializing in just one sport.

Richard Monette, managing director of the non-profit Active for Life, which promotes raising physically active kids through its website and other initiatives, says parents aren’t really providing their kids the leg up they think they are when they devote so many hours to just one activity.

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“What the science seems to communicate is if a child specializes too early on, where they get to an age where they can play at national level, they’re often less successful than children who have had a multi-sport foundation early in life,” says Monette, who runs the organization from his home in Banff, Alta.

Consider that against what really happens in a place like Toronto where kindergarteners are groomed for select and rep hockey. Where even 7- and 8-year-olds can be shut out of competitive teams because the spots are spoken for by the kids whose parents got them into that club years earlier.

That’s because, despite what research shows or what national sporting organizations have in their mandates about early specialization, “it doesn’t always trickle down to into the grassroots,” says Tracia Finlay-Watson, a physical education lecturer at the University of Toronto.

But trying out a variety of activities helps kids develop the movement and spatial-awareness skills that are fundamental to physical literacy — the foundation people need to be active and healthy for life, she says. What’s more, it’s physical literacy that helps kids become balanced and stronger athletes later on.

Incredibly, Finlay-Watson sees the consequences of a poorly rounded sporting background play out at the university level — “like elite level runners who don’t know how to kick a ball.”

“The other thing is sports used to be seasonal,” she says. “Now, if you want to stay on that rep team, you have to train year-round, and often it’s at the exclusion of other activities.”

Kari Svenneby has actively worked to avoid that single-activity focus with her two girls, 8 and 13. Originally from Norway, the Toronto mom blogs about active family life with an aim to bringing some of her home country’s zest for outdoor life to our city’s over-programmed parenting culture.

“In Toronto, you can sign your kids up for everything and you can be busy every day, if that’s what you want,” Svenneby says. Her family likes to leave room on the weekends for things like hiking together in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter, so if an activity required a big commitment in tournament travel, they wouldn’t pursue that for their kids.

“I want my kids to be exposed to a lot of different activities, not just one thing,” she says. “But it’s not just sports. I’ve seen it with stage parents, too, who are so focused on that.”

Svenneby is careful to note that she thinks children get a lot out of the experience of being part of a team.

“But we find similar elements of that in the Scouts movements. Both my girls have been active scouters, and even though we’re an outdoor family, it’s not really about that,” she explains. “It’s more about being with other friends and learning about something together as a team and working with others.”

Monette from Active for Life says he hopes to see more sports organizations come together to promote the benefits of playing more than one game, as Canada’s national sports organizations (NSOs) for hockey, soccer, basketball and baseball did with a video released in April.

He says he’d like to see NSOs come together to implement multi-sport programs that, with one registration, would give kids a chance to participate in five different sports throughout the school year.

Imagine that, carpool-weary moms and dads.

Brandie Weikle writes about parenting issues and is the host of The New Family Podcast and editor of thenewfamily.com. Follow her on Twitter: @bweikle

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